The Miracle Thief

by Iris Anthony

  If I left without my child, the Queen Mother promised to send me with a dower to the royal abbey at Rochemont. And there no one would know about my past unless I chose to tell them.

  I agreed to everything, agreed to it all, and I might have managed to leave without any trouble if Charles had not intercepted me at the palace gate. He was there waiting for me, holding our daughter in his arms.

  The noble who rode with me aided me to dismount. His squire held my horse’s reins.

  Charles strode toward me. “You cannot leave. I will not allow it.” Anger and hurt warred in his eyes.

  “I must go. It’s for your own good.”

  “Why can’t I say what’s for my good and what’s not? I’m to be king, after all. Just as soon as I can get Odo to agree.”

  The child stirred in his arms.

  “Hush! You’ve woken her.” I had already kissed my babe good-bye. I did not know if I could do it again.

  “Take her.” He thrust the bundle at me. “If you will not stay for me, then stay for her.”

  “I—cannot.”

  “How am I—how am I supposed to rule without you?” His brows were twisting as his eyes promised things I should never have hoped to believe in.

  I took in a great sniffling breath and tried to smile. “You won’t be able to rule with me. You have not got any allies. And you need those more than you need me.”

  “Who told you that? They lie!”

  A great tearing sob of a laugh broke from my throat. “It was your mother, my lady the queen.”

  “You cannot leave. We are—we are going to be married!”

  “I did not think, in fact, that you wanted to.”

  “Did not want to! How can you say such a—?”

  “I shame you.”

  “How can you even think—!”

  “You never planned a wedding. You never told anyone at all.”

  “Because I wanted them all to love you the same as I did.”

  I did not know what to believe. I wanted his words to be true. I yearned for them to be true, and yet the things the Queen Mother and the archbishop had told me made the most sense.

  As I hesitated, he seized my arm and forced the child into the curve of it.

  I tried to refuse her. “Charles—!”

  “Don’t you love her? Don’t you love me?”

  “I can’t—don’t make me—” I broke off as I gave voice to the sob that had gripped my throat. “I can do nothing for you. Can you not understand? You need—oh, you need so much more than me!” The babe was crying now in earnest. We’d woken her with all of our jostling. I raised her to my breast and bent to kiss her soft cheek and breathe in her sweet scent. And I feared then I could not do it. I could not leave them. I thrust the babe toward him. “Take her!” I fairly screamed the words at him. “Take her from me! Give her everything I cannot.”

  “And what do you want me to do with her?” Unshed tears had brightened his eyes. He had sunk within his mantle and stood there looking far younger than his age. He clutched our infant child to his chest as she squalled against him. “What am I supposed to do?”

  I could not stay. Not if I wanted to leave. I backed away from them both. “Keep her. Love her.” I could speak no longer for the tears that had gripped my throat and were now cascading down my cheeks.

  Love her for me, on my behalf. Love her twice as much again as I would have. That’s what I had wanted most to say. But at that time, like so many others that had been and would later come, words had failed me.

  ***

  I do not much remember the journey to the abbey. My escort was small. Just the one noble and his squire, and the noble paid me little mind. It was the squire who fetched what I needed as we made our way from inn to inn. Did it take a week? A full fortnight? I do not know. My heart was numb; my soul was dead; my grief had nearly rent my mind in two.

  I had fifteen years when I left my beloved and gave up my daughter as well. I want to think I would choose differently, having grown older and presumably wiser. But I knew myself better now, and still the Queen Mother was right. I could not have been what Charles needed; it had not been in my nature. I had not been enough.

  I could not fault him for taking me into his bed. I was to blame as much as he. And never once, after I had given myself to God, had I overstepped my bounds. Never once had I tried to take for myself a position that belonged to someone else, or to ask for anything I did not deserve. In fact, I asked for nothing, save the tending of Saint Catherine’s altar. And so I tried to content myself with the life I had been given. And surely, my troubles were not so weighty as some. In a world tormented by wars and famines, anger and strife, my life at the abbey could have been considered a veritable paradise. I was not unaware of my blessings.

  Charles would have fought for me. Of that I was now certain, just as I was certain I would not have been worth the fight. Had I been someone else… Perhaps then. If I had not been me, then I might have stayed. But there was no use mining old regrets.

  ***

  As I went about my new work, I tried to put away all thoughts of the young abbess and did my best not to despair of the days to come. While I went about my tasks, I whispered prayers to Saint Catherine just the same as I always had. And in between prayers, I assigned names to my charges, who did not have them. The girl who would not talk, I called Ava. She did not seem to mind. The boy who hopped about so sprightly, flapping his arms, I named Pepin. The mimic I called Otker. And he who insisted upon eating twigs, Gerold. The heir I simply called Young Lord, since he ruled the hospice as if it were his own domain.

  Sister Sybilla insisted I wasted my time. She said they hadn’t the sense to know their own hands from their feet. But I paid her no mind, and I added their names to those I brought before Saint Catherine.

  I asked for no miracles. In this place to which the least habitually came, these were truly the least of all. But I did not fault them for it. Neither did I have the impudence to wish them other than they were. What we were was God’s business. If these ills they had been given were a penance, then they must endure like the rest of us. And if they had managed to find themselves here, it must be for some reason. For some eternal purpose. If they could not understand the benefit of righteousness in this life, we were to pray they might be able to do so in the next. And so I pleaded for an ease of body and mind. And a stillness of spirit to those who did not have it.

  As I walked in from attending the office of compline one night, Sister Sybilla found me. She seemed to have been lurking by the door. “There is a problem with our young lord, and the only one who ever dares to approach him is you.”

  It was true I had taken to speaking with him. In spite of Sister Sybilla’s dire warnings, I had never seen any evidence of a demon’s possession. And his manner of speaking and his way of being brought back memories of my former days. Of time spent in a court filled with nobles and their courteous pleasantries. I had not found his wits lacking at all.

  “He keeps kicking at the back wall, and he’s bloodied his foot.”

  “Why have you not pulled him away?”

  “He will not let me. He threw me to the ground when I tried. And now all the others have grown frightened.”

  Inside the hospice, pandemonium reigned. Pepin was walking in circles, flapping his hands. Ava had stopped up her ears and was wailing. Gerold had dropped to the floor and was rocking back and forth as he whispered words I could not understand. And Otker latched on to me as I passed, peering up at me through those curiously slanted eyes. “Poor lord, poor lord.”

  Sister Sybilla had spoken the truth. The young man was kicking at the wall as if he hoped he might break through it.

  I whispered a prayer as I approached. “Young Lord?”

  He twisted his head, regarding me with a wild-eyed, panicked gaze. “Don’t make me stop. Don’t make me sto
p.”

  “You’re hurting yourself.” His shoe had fallen off, and kicking at the wall had made a bloody pulp of his foot.

  “I can’t stop. Don’t make me.” His handsome face twisted into a grimace. What spirit was this that possessed him? In spite of his menacing words, his tone was frantic. “Why can’t I stop?”

  I turned to Sister Sybilla. “Keep the others in the corner.”

  “Don’t make me stop. Don’t make me stop!”

  I put a hand to his sweat-soaked brow. His head lurched beneath my palm as he kicked out again at the wall. “I won’t. I won’t stop you.” I couldn’t. I wasn’t strong enough. “I want only to keep you from hurting yourself.”

  “I can’t stop. I can’t stop!”

  Searching for some way to protect him from himself, I drew a blanket from one of the pallets, rolled it into a cushion, and held it up in front of the wall.

  His next kick nearly wrested it from my hands.

  I made my grip more secure, turning my face from the path of his foot. “There now. Is that not better?”

  The strain on the boy’s face seemed to ease. By turns, his kicking slowed. And then, finally, it ceased altogether, and he dropped to the floor, panting. When he looked up at me, it was through shamed, guilt-ridden eyes. “I could not keep from doing it, and I did not want to hurt Sister Sybilla, but I just… I could not stop.”

  I stooped to kneel beside him. “What makes you do such things?”

  “I don’t know. I tried not to, truly I did, but after a while, I just had to. I could not keep myself from it.”

  Poor, tormented soul.

  He sprawled against the wall, spent and panting, his fine tunic rent at the bottom into shreds. “You won’t send me away?”

  There was no place to send him to. He and all the others were our charges just as surely as they were our prisoners. Their bodies entrusted to our care, and their souls… We tried to redeem their souls as well. “No. We will not send you away.” I would pray for him, as I did for them all.

  Pepin had wandered over. He sat down beside us and stroked the young lord’s silk embroidered sleeve, running a finger up and down the twining braid and across the silver threads. Though the young man’s sister had never once come to see him, at least his family still had the decency to clothe him well.

  Pepin lifted the sleeve to his face, where he rubbed it against his cheek. And then he rubbed it against the young lord’s, smiling as he did it. He lifted it to mine as well.

  Silk.

  With such a smooth, soft hand.

  I used to wear robes made of silk. Magnificent robes trimmed with gold and silver, embroidered with multicolored threads and scented with rosewater.

  Like the young lord, I tried to push my thoughts away. I tried to ignore them. And like him too, I found myself bewitched by them. If he was possessed by some tortuous spirit, then perhaps I was possessed by my memories, which had bruised my heart, leaving it bloodied and torn.

  ***

  Do what is right; do not be afraid to speak.

  I had done; I was not.

  But look where my promises had gotten me. As the snow on the mountains’ tops began to creep toward us, the gloomy winter’s days seemed to bring the young lord darker moods. Though the spirits that seized him were terrible to behold, were it not for him, were it not for the times when he was in good humor, the hospice would have been a dreadful and cheerless place. As often as I had been able to ease his torments and calm his mind, another spell always seemed to come in its place.

  He tore great fistfuls of hair from his head.

  He battered himself against the table one night.

  He tried to stick himself with a knife, but Sister Sybilla and I wrestled him to the ground before he caused himself too great of harm. But instead of thanking us, he only lay on the floor, weeping with misery, as if we had not just saved him from himself.

  Perhaps I was a fool to think I could offer more to these poor souls than a place to sleep and a bit of food to staunch their deepest hunger. While I struggled at my new work, the abbess had her rooms refitted with hangings and draperies. She gave the most treasured of the library’s manuscripts to her father, and she ordered the illumination in Saint Catherine’s chapel cut again by half.

  Had I saved my life by coming to this place only to see it destroyed by selfishness and greed? But what could I do? I could not leave. I had pledged myself to Christ, and I could not revoke my vows without risking excommunication. There was no escaping the abbey’s gates.

  It was then I first began to wonder how God could work his will when man seemed so set against him. Did no one else see what I did? Did God Himself not even care?

  CHAPTER 21

  Anna

  ALONG THE PILGRIMS’ PATH TO ROCHEMONT ABBEY

  Had I truly heard voices? Could it be that I was saved from my wilderness exile?

  I broke through the trees at a run and came upon a group of travelers. They were men, all of them. Unhorsed, they were standing in a loose circle about a fire. Falling to my knees, I clasped the feet of the first man I reached as a great sob tore from my throat.

  A hand seized me at the elbow, pulling me away from him, and I was yanked to standing.

  Turning, I regarded this second man through tear-washed eyes. It was only then I began to wonder what kind of people I had come upon. They looked like no men I had ever seen. They had mustaches, it was true, but they curved upward into sharp points instead of drooping. Their chins were not clean-shaven either; each of them wore a beard. And their dress was strange: their mantles longer and secured at the waist, with furs thrown over their shoulders. Their stockings were not cross-gartered, but wrapped with swathing bands, and the man who held my arm even wore a metal helmet.

  Shaking my hair from my eyes, I tried to free myself, but the man who held me only tightened his grip.

  “If you please…” I tried once more.

  The first man, the one whose feet I had taken hold of, seized my other arm and tried to wrench me away. I might have been glad for his aid, only the two of them began exchanging words in an unknown tongue. And the longer they kept at it, the more heated their conversation became.

  “I did not mean to—” I wished they would stop pulling at me! “I am only a pilgrim.”

  The first man tugged me toward himself. The second took a firmer hold on my arm and pulled back.

  As I began to appeal to the others, who stood watching, for help, a third man approached. He looked stranger still with his red tunic split open all down the front, its wide edges splayed upon his shoulders. But he put a hand to each of the men.

  Snarling, they both released me to turn on him.

  Using my newly gained freedom, I backed away, though my knees were quaking beneath the folds of my tunic. In my distress, I looked to the others, and my eyes fastened on a familiar sight. Two clerics. “Help me!”

  The younger of the two turned at me, blinking, as if noticing for the first time that I had spoken. His eyes shared the same peculiar hue of the two men who had seized me. They were a light, bright blue.

  “Please, save me.”

  “You are saved. They will let no harm come to you. At least not until they determine who you are.”

  “I am Anna. From Autun.”

  “The one man believes you to be a troll.” He pointed to the one who had jerked me to standing. “A dwarf.”

  “A troll?” I did not know what that was.

  “A spirit. A fairy. The other believes you are a huldra.”

  “But, I am not either of those things!”

  He nodded toward the third man, the one in the red tunic, who was beginning to check the assault of the others. “That’s what he said. He says you’re just a girl. But the other two are sure you must be some sort of troll.”

  “But why!”


  “It looks as if you must live in a cave or under the rocks somewhere.”

  I looked down at my soiled tunic as I put a hand to my leaf-spangled hair.

  “And you did come from the wood.” He spoke as if their fighting was my fault.

  “Please!” I beseeched the other man, the older one. The one whose tunic was bound with a jeweled belt. “I am a pilgrim on my way to the abbey at Rochemont.”

  The younger one, who wore a monk’s dull robe, stepped between us. “You don’t wear the clothes of a pilgrim, but if you have a letter from your bishop?” He held out his hand as if requesting to see it. “If I can show it to them, I can explain who you are.”

  “I did have one, but some wolves chased me from the road, and I—I dropped it. I left it behind with all of my other things.”

  “That would have been helpful, for they are trying to decide what to do with you, whether to keep you or let you go.”

  “Pagans!” The older man was sending dark looks in their direction.

  “What kind of people are they that they would think me some spirit? All I want is to—”

  The monk looked down into my eyes. “They are Danes.”

  “Danes?” But…but the Danes were wicked and evil, murderers and thieves!

  The man in the red tunic was holding up a hand now, as if to stay them. He wiped at the sweat on his brow with a forearm. I glanced at the men who ringed the fight. There were three of them, all dressed in those strange garments, cheering in that strange tongue of theirs.

  I tugged on the older man’s sleeve. “Is the road nearby?”

  He gestured beyond the men. “Just there.”

  “And it goes to the abbey? At Rochemont?”

  “Eventually. We’re bound for the abbey as well.”

  “The Danes are going to the abbey?” If the Danes were going to the abbey, then they must be intending to plunder it. God help Saint Catherine! If I wanted to pray to her, then I would have to reach the abbey before they did. As the clerics and the other men watched the fight, I withdrew. Slipping around them all, I went toward the horses and what I hoped would be the road. But at my approach, they whinnied.